Project Engineering Strategy

A Codex skill for teams or solo developers who want engineering work to stay stable across sessions, branches, issues, and handoffs instead of drifting into chat-only execution.

Why Use It

This skill is for repositories where "just continue from the last chat" is not reliable enough.

It pushes Codex toward a more disciplined workflow:

• read the current handoff, checklist, and recent test evidence before editing
• fix models, contracts, runtime behavior, and event chains before polishing UI
• keep GitHub tracker state, execution contracts, and local docs synchronized
• separate self-test evidence from human acceptance
• avoid treating worktrees or temporary paths as official delivery paths

Before vs After

A fresh Codex session on a real repository tends to fail in predictable ways.

Without This Skill

• Codex starts editing from recent chat memory instead of checking the actual handoff
• UI polish starts before models, contracts, or runtime behavior are verified
• self-test results and human acceptance get blended together
• implementation moves ahead while issue, project, or doc state drifts

With This Skill

• Codex identifies the current handoff, acceptance state, and recent test evidence before editing
• execution starts from models, contracts, runtime behavior, and event chains before UI cleanup
• self-test evidence is reported separately from human acceptance
• repo docs, tracker state, and execution context stay aligned in the same round

That is the core shift: less chat-only continuity, more project-level continuity.

Good Fit

Use this repo if you want Codex to act more like a project engineer and less like a stateless patch generator.

It is especially useful when your project has:

• multiple sessions over days or weeks
• handoff docs or acceptance checklists
• GitHub Issues or Projects as execution surfaces
• branch or worktree-based isolation
• explicit self-test and human acceptance stages

Example Prompts

• Use project-engineering-strategy. This repo needs a stable Codex workflow across sessions.
• Before editing anything, tell me which handoff, acceptance, and self-test artifacts you expect in this project.
• Keep GitHub Project status, the execution issue, and local docs in sync while implementing this task.

Install

Manual install:

git clone https://github.com/wgwtest/project-engineering-strategy.git
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
cp -R project-engineering-strategy/project-engineering-strategy ~/.codex/skills/project-engineering-strategy

For local development with easy upgrades:

git clone https://github.com/wgwtest/project-engineering-strategy.git
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
ln -s "$(pwd)/project-engineering-strategy/project-engineering-strategy" ~/.codex/skills/project-engineering-strategy

Restart Codex after installing or updating the skill.

Installer-style inputs:

• repo: wgwtest/project-engineering-strategy
• path: project-engineering-strategy

Repository Layout

• project-engineering-strategy/: installable skill package
• README.md: landing page for humans
• .github/: templates for issues and pull requests

The installable skill lives in a subdirectory so the repository root can hold public-facing files without polluting the package itself.

Related Repos

• novel-writing: fiction planning, drafting, and revision
• novel-project-strategy: longform fiction workflow and recovery

Contributing

If you want to improve the skill, start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Precise examples, better trigger wording, and clearer real-world usage prompts are more valuable than generic advice.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Maintainer Note

This public repository is synced from a separate source-of-truth workspace. Keep the root landing files and the installable package aligned in the same release.